


Periphrasis

by morpholomeg



Series: Morphology, or a matter of circumstance [2]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7806952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morpholomeg/pseuds/morpholomeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As it happened, Laura noticed Nat first. Well, the red hair was striking, and she was still wearing it long at that stage. One long plait down her back, ending in a blue bobble. She had on slightly flared jeans and a plain pink t-shirt, and her raccoon dæmon was chirruping excitedly at the range of paint chips.</p><p>As for Clint, his shoulders were hunched, and his head was down. She couldn’t see his dæmon immediately, but then Laura moved further into the aisle and realised it was just because she was hiding behind his legs. A jackrabbit, with a black tail and ears, squatting close to the ground.</p><p>There was something wrong with this man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Periphrasis

**Author's Note:**

> I originally conceived of Periphrasis as a 5,000 word interlude between parts one and two of this trilogy… and then it got away with me and we ended up with this. I promise that the planned second interlude will be an actual less-than-10k interlude.
> 
> This fic is dedicated to sarcasticphoenix on tumblr, and was beta'd by the wonderful Bethany, known on tumblr as realityisnoplacetolive.

_Previously:_

Clint's eyes were opening now, and his tongue came out to wet his lips - no, to say, "Thea."

"I'm here," she said. "Clint? Clint, I know it doesn't feel like it, but I'm here."

"Thea," he said again, louder this time. "Thea."

But then his eyes were fully open, and he was clearly distressed, on his way to panicking, even. He jerked his arm out of the doctor's grasp and reached up for Thea, getting his fingers into her fur.

"Hey, hey, Clint, I'm here, it's fine, what's wrong, what hurts?"

He was staring wild-eyed at Thea, watching her face, watching her speak without any sign of understanding, and Phil's heart sank.

"I can't hear you," Clint said. "I can't hear you."

~

The farm was Coulson’s doing, or so Natasha was led to believe. Clint and Thea needed the time to relearn each other before they could be sent out on missions, before they could be seen by other agents. The girl Simmons had guessed too easily. That couldn’t happen again.

Natasha had never seen this side of America before. She’d done jobs in New York, in Los Angeles, in Miami before she’d let Clint find her, but she’d left all of the inland continent untouched. This wide open space felt like nowhere she’d ever been, too green and lush to be familiar to her. The closest she could come was the French paysage, or perhaps the German countryside if it were warmer, but the ambient noise was different here. Cassum, intrigued, tried on the form of a raccoon as they paced around the dilapidated farmhouse.

“Peaceful,” she said.

“Isolated,” Natasha returned. “He needs practice.”

“But not yet.”

No, not yet. Natasha had made her career of watching people, of learning them from the way they moved and spoke and dressed. Clint Barton, when she had met him for the first time, had been an oddly stable person, at least in her books. Open, unashamed, friendly. It was the strangest thing, to find a well-adjusted assassin, and yet there he had been, reaching out to her.

Now, Natasha stepped back into the farmhouse to see Clint sat on an upturned crate, staring at the whitewashed wall and ignoring Coulson as he spoke on the phone. Thea was watching Coulson, though, lying just a little too far from Clint’s feet, eyes carefully tracking the movements in the room.

Coulson snapped his phone shut and turned to face Natasha. “Satisfactory?” he asked.

Not an idle question. “Yes,” she answered. “The building is structurally sound, two exits, and the barn has a cellar. How far are we from the nearest town?”

“About five miles,” said Coulson. “So long as you don’t forget to pick up milk when you go for groceries…”

They both waited a moment for Clint to say something, but he didn’t. Thea’s ears twitched, and Alevrie looked sharply at her, but she didn’t speak up.

“Do we have a plan while we’re here, sir?” Natasha asked.

Coulson shrugged. “Fix the place up. It would make a good safehouse if one of us ever needed to go really off-grid. This isn’t SHIELD official, the only person who knows exactly where we are is the Director.”

And it was a project, a constructive one. Giving Clint something to get invested in, and a more concrete goal than the woolly instruction of ‘getting back to normal’. Natasha wasn’t convinced that it would actually help with the latter, but it likely wouldn’t hurt either.

“Romanoff, you might as well construct a cover identity here.”

That surprised her. She looked carefully at Coulson, who half-smiled. “This is a retreat for all of us. You can use it too.”

She nodded. Cassum stretched up onto her hind legs, tossed her head a little, and said, “I think I like the raccoon form.”

“Suits you,” said Clint.

A careful shockwave echoed through the room. Clint turned to face Cassum. “They’re damn smart animals,” he said. “And good with their hands.”

Thea sat up and stared at him, but didn’t respond.

Coulson was watching them, his expression controlled. “I have to go back tonight,” he said. “There’s always something they need me for at HQ.”

Perhaps he was hoping to provoke a reaction out of Clint. The closest he got was a look from Thea, but she didn’t speak. Waiting for Clint to speak first, Natasha thought.

And of course, he wouldn’t.

~

_Three days later._

~

As it happened, Laura noticed Nat first.

Well, the red hair was striking, and she was still wearing it long at that stage. One long plait down her back, ending in a blue bobble. She had on slightly flared jeans and a plain pink t-shirt, and her raccoon dæmon was chirruping excitedly at the range of paint chips. New homeowner, then, but in a town this small? A woman that young? She must be with someone.

That was when she noticed Clint. His shoulders were hunched, and his head was down. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt too, but his were covered in dust. She couldn’t see his dæmon immediately, but then Laura moved further into the aisle and realised it was just because she was hiding behind his legs. A jackrabbit, with a black tail and ears, squatting close to the ground.

There was something wrong with this man.

It was the woman who turned and saw Laura though. There was a sharp glance, so quick that Laura thought she’d imagined it, and then a friendly, eager smile. “Hi! Could you help us?”

Laura put on her professional face and stepped forward. “Sure. What are you looking for?” Beside her, Antohi wagged his tail.

“We just moved into this farmhouse, but it belonged to a great uncle of ours who never actually lived there. It's been abandoned for ages, whitewash on all the walls,” said the young woman. “I’m trying to get Clint to brighten the place up.”

The man - Clint - didn’t react. He had hearing aids in, Laura noticed. Maybe he didn’t have them switched on? Not her place to say.

“Right,” she said. “So, you need to wash the whitewash off first - if it’s on interior walls, it’s probably distemper, so you'll need to use hot water. Then once it’s dry you’ll need to seal it - we’ve got some primers in the next aisle. After that, you can paint it as normal. Are you doing the work yourselves?”

“That’s the plan,” the woman said brightly.

Laura bit her lip. “And, um, do you know what you’re doing?”

That got her another sharp look, this one more obvious. The jackrabbit sniffed, though, and nudged the raccoon with her head. The woman subsided. “Okay. Maybe we don’t.”

Laura smiled. “There’s a couple of guys on summer break you could hire. And I’m only part-time here, if you wanted an extra hand.”

The woman turned to the man. “Clint? What do you think?”

Clint only shrugged. He could hear then, or maybe he was lipreading.

The woman sighed. “Clint. Please.”

“I don’t know,” he said. His voice was low and scratchy. The jackrabbit looked up like she was surprised to hear him speak at all. “You decide.”

He swallowed. Laura glanced down at Antohi - he had his head cocked to the side, looking up at the man.

“I can give you my number, if you like,” she said. “Give me a ring when you decide.”

“Thank you,” said the woman with another beautiful smile. “That would be great. I’m Nat Barton. Clint’s my brother.”

Laura glanced between them. They didn’t look much alike, but maybe Nat dyed her hair. Or they might be adopted, she supposed. “Laura Morgan,” she offered in return. “Give me a sec, I’ll just get some paper.”

~

The call came sooner than she’d expected, later that evening. Her dad shouted up the stairs. “Laura! Got a lady on the phone for you. Come by!”

Laura sighed. “Border collie jokes got old when I was fifteen, Dad.”

She clattered down the stairs, only managing not to trip over Antohi thanks to long years of practice. When she got down to the hallway, both her parents were waiting by the phone. Such a pair: her dad small and wiry as his whippet dæmon, and her mom just as short, but rounder, and with twice the presence of her dad. She was practically glaring at the phone, impatient, but her dad just had an eyebrow raised.

“Says her name’s Nat,” he said, handing the phone over. He fingerspelled the name for her mother’s benefit.

Small town problems, Laura thought. Her parents knew all of her friends. A new name grabbed their attention like nothing else.

“Customer,” she told them, signing the word before she took the phone. “Hi, Miss Barton.”

 _You tell me everything_ , her mother signed, shoving the words at her in a way that said it wasn’t a suggestion. Laura rolled her eyes and turned away as her dad shepherded her mom back into the living room.

“Hey,” came the response. “Is that offer to help paint our house still open?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “I can get a couple of guys-”

“Actually,” Nat interrupted. “Would it be too much to ask if it was just you? Not that we don’t - I’m sure your friends are great guys, but Clint’s…”

Laura paused. “Uh, in all honesty? I wouldn’t really feel comfortable coming to your place on my own.”

“No, that’s fair enough,” said Nat. “You and a friend then?”

The easy acceptance made her feel a little better about it. “Yeah, okay. I’m on the morning shift at the store tomorrow, but I can probably grab someone and stop by in the afternoon, scope it out?”

“Thank you. Uh, the place is kind of difficult to find - if we drive down, maybe you could follow us back?”

So the first time that Laura went to the farmhouse, it was in Aaron-from-high-school’s car, dressed in old baggy jeans and a checked shirt which had belonged to her mom fifteen years ago, following Nat’s beat-up red truck, its flatbed filled with sealer, rollers, buckets, brushes and trays.

“She’s new,” Aaron said. He had a ringneck snake dæmon; her tongue had flickered out to taste the air when she’d seen Nat.

“Yeah,” said Laura. “Her and her brother. Just got the place, apparently.”

“How old d’you think she is?”

Laura frowned. “I don’t know. Younger than us, maybe twenty? Her brother’s older, I think. Could be thirty or so.”

“Bit of an age gap,” Aaron said.

Laura just shrugged. Antohi was in the car’s backseat, paws up on the window, watching the fields go by, but he poked his nose over Laura’s shoulder and licked her neck to get her attention. Nat was turning left.

“Is that even a road?” Laura asked.

“Trail, at best,” Aaron answered. “You ever been out here?”

“Nope.”

They were maybe five miles outside town, in the middle of nowhere. The farmland they were crossing had been abandoned long ago, full of weeds and grasses. When they came to the house, it was likewise clearly old and empty, but beautiful enough in itself: a pretty little veranda with slightly rotten railings, a classic wooden façade in need of a good lick of paint, and lots of windows with broken and flapping shutters.

“Hell of a project,” said Aaron.

“No kidding,” Laura agreed.

Nat pulled up right outside and didn’t wait for them, heading straight inside. Laura could hear her calling for Clint.

“Guess we just go in,” said Aaron, turning off the engine.

Antohi jumped over the central console to follow Laura out the passenger door and into the house. The wooden stairs up to the front door creaked alarmingly under her feet, but they felt solid enough. Laura shared a quick glance with Aaron before stepping inside.

“Wow,” she said.

The interior was just as beautifully abandoned as the rest of the property. Hardwood floors with no varnish, big windows with no curtains, a complete lack of furniture revealing a gorgeous open space.

Nat clattered back down the stairs. “Yep. Don’t judge - we only got here at the weekend. Clint’ll be down in a sec. He’s been putting all our stuff upstairs.”

“Your brother, right?” said Aaron.

“That’s him,” said Nat. “By the way, money - we said twenty dollars each, right?” She was digging into her wallet, counting out bills.

“Uh, yeah,” said Aaron. “Think so.”

“Thank you,” said Laura, tucking the money into her back pocket.

Nat smiled. “You’re welcome.”

Clint’s jackrabbit dæmon preceded him down the stairs, bounding out of reach of his heavy boots.

“Hey dude,” said Aaron.

Clint nodded. “Hi. You’re Aaron?”

His voice sounded just as tired and unused as before. Maybe he signed with his dæmon.

“It’s nice to see you again,” said Laura.

He stared at her. Nat cleared her throat. “So, shall we get started?”

Stripping the distemper wasn’t exactly complicated, just repetitive and tiring. Clint and Aaron took the top of the walls, though Clint had to use a footstool. Laura and Nat started on the centre, and even Nat’s dæmon picked up a smaller sponge to get the skirting boards, which was frankly adorable. They didn’t talk much; Aaron kept trying to start up a conversation with Nat, but she shut him down with such amazing politeness that Laura wondered if she might genuinely be oblivious, until she caught sight of Clint’s dæmon sniggering in the corner.

Clint’s face was totally impassive, but that made Laura smile all the more. Cheeky, she thought. Sneaky. Maybe this guy was _fun_.

After a little while, the water was cooling and the distemper wasn’t coming off so easily.

“I’ll go dump these out,” said Laura.

“Anywhere behind the house is good,” said Nat. “Tell you what, we could break for a snack now anyway. I’ll go clean up a bit.”

Laura hefted up two of the buckets and went out the back door, Antohi moving ahead of her. He picked a spot to empty the buckets, under a hedgerow which was well and truly dead, and Laura tipped the first one out. It hadn’t rained in a while, and the water rolled away over the dusty earth, leaving white trails behind. Laura watched it go, tracing patterns as if in clouds or constellations, and then giggled when Antohi leapt back and forth over the stream.

“You absolute puppy!”

She picked up the second bucket and sloshed it threateningly in his direction. He yelped and bounded back towards her, diving out of the way just as she let the water go. Laura stumbled back, and promptly knocked over a third bucket, which she definitely hadn’t brought out.

She span round, and came face to face with Clint, who must have brought out the last bucket, and who now had boots completely sodden with liquid whitewash.

“Sorry!” she blurted. She signed it, too, rubbing her fist in a circle over her breastbone. _Sorry._

Clint stared at her, ignoring the bucket as it rolled away from his feet. His dæmon hopped over it. “You speak - you know sign language.”

Laura nodded. “My mom’s Deaf. You… don’t?”

Slowly, he shook his head.

He was sullen and stubborn and distant, but Antohi was whining quietly at Laura’s ankles, and that was why she asked, “Do you want to learn?”

He didn’t answer for a long time. The jackrabbit’s ears twitched.

“Doesn’t have to be from me,” Laura said. “I mean - probably easier from me than Mom, since you don’t know any ASL and she’s never taught anyone who wasn’t me before, but there’s the girl who interprets at the church, Bethany - and she learned at college, you could do that -”

He was smiling. Just a little bit, but it was there. “How d’you say thank you?”

She raised her hand to her chin and then brought it back down, showing him her palm. _Thank you._ He repeated the gesture, a little too slow, a little too imprecise. Not speaking hands, not yet.

“Good,” she said.

He smirked. “Liar.”

She shook her head. “It was good. For a first sign. You’ll get better.”

But for some reason that wiped the smile from his face. He shrugged, and stepped back, and then Nat was in the doorway, raccoon dæmon chittering at her feet.

“There you are,” she smiled. “I was just putting together some sandwiches. Any preferences?”

~

That evening, Laura received another phone call.

“Hey, Laura, it’s Nat.”

“Hi,” she smiled. “Everything okay?”

“Great,” said Nat. “Listen, Clint told me you know ASL.”

“He did?” Laura asked, surprised.

There was a quick pause. “Well, okay, you caught me. Thea told me. His dæmon. She’s a lot more talkative than him when we’re on our own.”

That was kind of sweet, if a little weird. “Right. Yeah, my mom’s Deaf, I grew up signing.”

“So you’re fluent? Like, actually bilingual?”

“Um, I don’t sign half as much as an actual Deaf person would, and I’ve got all kinds of vocab gaps…”

“So you’re conversationally fluent and modest,” Nat concluded.

Laura laughed.

“Would you be interested in giving us lessons?” Nat asked. “Both of us? We’d pay you, of course.”

“I’d be happy to teach you without being paid,” said Laura. “I’m very much not a teacher. All I can do is chat with you, and I’d do that for free.”

“Are you sure?” Nat asked. “The last thing I want to do is take advantage of you.”

That made Laura smile. “I’m sure. You can… I don’t know, you can buy me coffee or something.”

“You are sweet,” said Nat. “You promise you’re okay with it?”

“Promise,” said Laura. “Tell you what, why don’t we sign during food breaks, working on the house?”

“Sure, that sounds great,” said Nat. “I’ll give you my cell number, we haven’t had a landline installed yet. Are you free over the weekend at all?”

By the time she put the phone down, Laura had agreed to coming over every Thursday and Saturday to work on the house and sign with them. She’d also talked Nat into signing up for a loyalty card at the store, because from what she could see they were definitely going to spend enough to merit discounts.

“So what do you think?” she asked Antohi, back in their room.

He shrugged. “I like ‘em,” he said simply. “Clint’s hurt. Bad. But Nat’s good, right?”

“She seems it,” Laura agreed. “She cares about him. Must be weird, taking care of your big brother like that.”

But Antohi snuffled a bit.

“You don’t think so?” she asked.

“They’re both adults. And she loves him. We’d do the same.”

“Doesn’t stop it being weird. Or, okay, an adjustment,” Laura corrected. “Specially if he's ex-military or something. Do you think? Ex-army?”

“Where would he have been?” Antohi asked. “Yugoslavia?”

“I didn’t think that many people - that many American soldiers got hurt there,” said Laura. “Should read the papers more.”

He gave a soft bark of agreement, and the topic was dropped.

~

The time passed slowly, that first autumn, as the house slowly regained the appearance of a human habitation. Laura always enjoyed it when Nat came into the hardware store to choose a new paint colour for this room or that, insisting on holding the whole conversation in ASL even while trying to get across minutely nuanced feelings about the warmth of a particular amber, or the vibrancy of the pink cushions she’d ordered out of a catalogue.

 _Clint likes bright colours_ , she signed one day, contemplating a range of purples. And then she paused and repeated the sentence, adding in a tense marker. _Clint liked bright colours_.

Laura raised her eyebrows, and brought down the sign for ‘now’. _Not any more?_

Nat shook her head, and then she shook O-shapes on either side of her body. _Nothing._

 _He likes you_ , Laura signed. Antohi wagged his tail to emphasise the point.

That did get a smile out of Nat, but it was a small one. Laura realised, quite suddenly, that she had never seen Nat laugh.

“Hey, Laura, I’m going on my break,” called her manager. “Can you cover the till please.”

“Sure thing!” she said. _See you later_ , she signed to Nat.

Nat waved _goodbye_ , flapping her hand beside her head.

She picked up the ASL much quicker than Clint, but then she got more practice. Clint didn’t leave the house half so often, and when he did, he barely made eye contact with the people around him. Like any mystery, he was the subject of a lot of town gossip, with Nat dragged alongside him. Someone had heard somewhere that he was military, and it hadn’t taken much for folk to decide that he was suffering some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder, probably from the same event that took his hearing. The two women who ran the Sunday school thought he was a poor dear, and his sister a lovely young lady for moving in with him, but the old man who owned the golf club thought he was suspicious, bound to blow up in a violent rage at some time soon, you mark my words, neither of them ever go to church, and where are the parents, huh? Bad family, must be.

Laura paid attention, but only insomuch as she couldn’t avoid it. Nat gave no indication that she’d heard the slightest thing, but she must have done. She wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, but she was personable, friendly, always chatted with the cashiers at the grocery store…

Clint didn’t. Oh, he was perfectly polite, beyond the silence. Whatever he did say was courteous enough, sometimes with a glimpse of humour, but it was never much.

 _How have you been?_ she would sign, turning her curled hands forward and then pointing at him.

He pointed to himself with one hand, and then brought it out with a right angle between fingers and thumb. _Fine._

It took a lot to get him to speak, orally or manually, beyond monosyllables. Weeks of coaxing went past before she realised that the way to get through to him was to ask him to describe things external to him. He had travelled before the - well, before - and he could describe Paris or Nairobi or Hanoi in ways that made Laura feel like she was walking their streets. He would ask her for the relevant vocabulary sometimes; other times, he would seem to forget that the purpose of the exercise was to use ASL and start sketching out the vista in his mind with his hands, creating the great curving line of London’s Regent Street with the sort of surety that he didn’t yet have when signing. Laura’s own hands would fall, quiescent, into her lap, and she would listen, and watch.

She’d watch Clint’s dæmon, too. Thea, Nat had said, and she was strange. Thin, maybe even gaunt, scruffy, but so much more emotive than her human. She would greet Antohi happily, sometimes, but other times would hang back behind Clint, far enough that it couldn’t be comfortable for them, although neither of them gave signs of pain. Too stoic. And when Clint spoke like that, when he gave his beautiful descriptions of places on far-off continents, Thea would stare up at him, as if she were constantly surprised that he would speak at all. She looked - half in love with him, which was a bizarre thought to have about someone’s dæmon, but it was the truth. She drank up every sign, every word, every gesture, like the supply might be finite.

Still, it was Nat with whom Laura got along with best, Nat who was an actual friend. Nat was the one who came to visit Laura’s parents a couple of times, delighting her mother by accepting relentless criticism of her signing with nothing but eagerness to learn more. Nat was nothing but pleasant and uncomplicated, until one day late in September.

It had been a good session with Clint. Nat hadn’t been part of it, having stepped out to do the grocery shopping, but Laura had sat Clint on the couch (complete with Nat's bright pink cushions) and managed to get him to talk a little bit about himself, under the guise of teaching him about time markers. They ran into vocabulary problems almost immediately.

“What’s the sign for circus?” he asked, early on.

Laura raised her eyebrows. “Uh, I think…” She lifted her hands, then realised, “No, wait, that would be ‘carnival’. Sorry. I mean, probably close enough, but maybe stick with ‘show’ for now?” She demonstrated.

He nodded, and began his tale, circling an open hand around his ear, taking them back in time.

_A long, long time ago, I was in a show..._

He stopped several times to ask for signs which Laura didn’t know - trick shot, trapeze, flaming wheel (that one she could cobble together) - and gradually he built up an unbelievable tale of his youth as a circus performing archer. Several times she interjected to shake her head or sign _you’re kidding me_ , but he would only smirk and carry on. Antohi slumped over Laura’s lap, entranced.

 _Nat?_ Laura asked at one point, finger-spelling her name.

And there he paused. He started to sign a negative, then stopped. His dæmon shook her head, her ears hitting his leg. _It’s her story, she should tell you_ , he signed in the end. His expression was dark again. Aloud, he said, “I see you in that doorway, Nat.”

Laura jerked around, and Nat stepped into the sitting room, looking somewhat sheepish. “Sorry. Didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Oh, shush, you wouldn’t be interrupting,” said Laura, getting up to greet her. Antohi went bounding over to Nat’s dæmon, who hesitated before meeting him nose to nose. “Let me bring some groceries in.”

Nat smiled, and the two of them headed back out to the truck. “Stopped at your store to pick up some more paint,” Nat confessed. “There’s no rain forecast for the rest of the week, so I thought we could start on the exterior.”

“Good plan,” said Laura. “Just please tell me you didn’t go wild with the colours without me there to guide you.”

“Very sedate, I promise.”

But before Laura could start unloading paint cans, Antohi whined slightly, and nudged Laura’s leg. She looked closer at Nat. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Sure,” she responded immediately, but her dæmon was swiping her tail, and Laura just waited until she said, “Well. Sort of. I know I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but - I mean, there’s a reason neither of us talk about our backgrounds all that much.”

“Shouldn’t I ask?”

“No, no, it’s probably - it’s probably good, but, I just felt like I should tell you -” She tossed her plait over her shoulder with an agitated movement of her head, mirroring her dæmon. “He was telling you about the circus, I saw that much, but he missed a lot of stuff out. The - well, the not-so-nice stuff. Our childhoods were…” Nat trailed off. “I don’t know what word to use.”

Laura felt something like guilt stir hot in her stomach. Hers had been lovely. Oh, it hadn’t been perfect - watching her Deaf mom living in a world built for hearing people wasn’t always fun, and Laura had taken classes she’d nearly failed and been cheated on by Ricky Thompson in ninth grade - but at the very least, it had been normal.

“You don’t have to tell me about it,” she said.

That got a twisted half-smile out of Nat. “I shouldn’t really. It’s Clint’s story before it’s mine. Just… I just want to make sure you’re aware. We’re both a little bit broken. Him more than me, most days. But he won’t hurt you.”

“I didn’t think he would,” said Laura. Antohi put his head against her knee, and she reached down to stroke one of his ears, running it between her fingers.

Nat pushed a stray lock of hair back behind her ear, tugging hard at it to keep it in place. “That’s because you’re a small-town puppy.”

Laura blinked. “Um. Was that an insult?”

“In another life, it was jealousy.”

It was strange. Before today, Nat had never given any impression of tragedy, of being tragic. Tired sometimes, yes. Despairing of Clint, almost. But not broken, or anything like it. She’d just seemed like the most capable, upbeat young woman Laura had ever met.

“But we both really appreciate you hanging around,” Nat continued. “Being our friend. You’ve been doing so much for us. If we can do anything for you - if I can do anything for you, just let me know.”

Laura smiled. “Likewise,” she said, and then she reached out and hugged her.

~

Like that, time went on. Laura coaxed tidbits of story from Clint and, more rarely, from Nat. They worked over the house together, getting more ambitious as the summer wore on, tearing up floors to reinstall them, replacing old single-glazing with brand new windows, even attempting to refit the kitchen before realising that was beyond any of their skills, and calling a professional in. Laura did once raise the question of money - neither of them were working - but Nat assured her they were fine, that the same uncle who had left them the farmhouse had also left them other property that they’d promptly sold off.

“I’ll go back to work at some point,” she said, “but we deserve a break, really.”

Laura’s mother started interrogating her over how much time she was spending out at the house, no longer mollified by visits from Nat. _Clint?_ she would ask. _I never see Clint. Why is that?_

And for all her supposed conversational fluency, Laura couldn’t find the words to explain. Clint was insular in the extreme. He walled himself off, he turned away - and yet his dæmon never did. Thea was expressive, open, always watching Laura’s face and her hands, even when she was shying away and hiding behind Clint. She had started to adapt some sign language, as Deaf people’s dæmons often did, sitting up on her hind legs and approximating the movement with her forepaws, twitching her ears in ways that marked tense or negation. She didn’t speak to Laura, of course, but she would place herself deliberately in Clint’s eyeline and force him to watch her.

What had happened to him? Laura didn’t even think of asking. She just watched, and listened, and waited.

 _Soon_ , she promised her mother. _I’ll ask._

But, of course, she ran out of time.

“Are you ever gonna do anything with the farmland?” Laura asked one day. The three of them had set up a barbecue outside that evening, and now they were lying on the grass, watching the skies. Antohi was slumped over Laura’s stomach, watching Thea on her other side. He did that a lot. “I mean, I doubt you guys know how to actually farm, but there must be books on it.”

Clint and Nat shared a significant glance.

“What?”

“You tell her,” said Clint.

Antohi raised his head. “Tell me what?” asked Laura.

Nat sighed. “We have to leave.”

Laura sat up, dislodging Antohi. “For how long?”

“It depends,” said Clint. “Could be two weeks. Could be forever.”

“Clint,” Nat said sharply.

“He doesn’t mean it like that,” said Thea.

Laura jumped, and the jackrabbit lowered her ears, embarrassed.

“Sorry!” Laura said quickly. “You can talk if you want. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

The ears perked back up again. “Thanks. Um. I’m Thea?”

Laura gave Antohi a little nudge. “Antohi,” he offered.

Nat and her raccoon looked at each other searchingly for a long time before the raccoon stepped forward. “Cassum,” she said.

“That’s an interesting name,” said Laura.

Again Cassum looked at Nat before answering. “Different root language,” she said. “We’re -”

But then she fell silent again.

“Anyway,” said Thea. “We don’t know if we’ll be able to come back.”

“Why?” asked Antohi. “Where are you going?”

“New York,” said Clint.

Laura waited, but no more information was forthcoming. “Is there something you can’t tell me?” she asked.

Cassum swiped at her nose with one small paw. Nat sighed. “No. It’s just family stuff. It’s just - I know what people say around here about our family. It’s - I don’t like that it’s true.”

Antohi whined and thumped his tail.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Laura firmly. “You’re good people. That’s what matters.”

For the first time in their acquaintance, Nat laughed. And it was a strange sound; it didn’t quite match her speaking voice, lower and sharper somehow. “You’re a sweetheart,” she said.

“She’s not,” said Clint. “She’s a good person.”

Laura wasn’t sure what to make of that. She put it aside to deal with later. “When do you leave?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” said Nat. “Early morning. If you want any of the food in the kitchen, you should help yourself. We’ll just chuck the rest out and go.”

It was all very sudden, Laura thought. “Well, promise me you’ll keep in touch,” she said.

“Sure,” said Nat.

Clint took a moment to think it over, like he used to when they first met. And then he nodded.

~

They were gone for ten months. During that time, Laura celebrated her twenty-first birthday, went full time at the store, and moved out of her parents’ house, into the apartment above the shop. It was convenient, having her boss also be her landlord; he knew exactly what her salary was, so she could be pretty sure he wouldn’t be hiking the rent any time soon. Of course, it did mean that she couldn’t blow off work to stay at home, but then she wasn’t the sort of person who did that anyway.

She never got any phone calls from either of the Barton siblings. She did get postcards, with pictures from all around the world, but always postmarked from New York. They both had kind of scrappy handwriting, and they were both experts in filling up the entire space without saying much of anything at all. Laura pulled together all the snippets they did give her to try and create a solid picture: Clint was working, but she didn’t know what job he had, Nat was possibly taking evening classes, since she mentioned brushing up on her language skills - oh, that would be how she picked up ASL so easily, if she’d studied languages before. There was no mention of the family business they were supposed to be dealing with, and the return address to which Laura sent her letters was a PO box.

Truth be told, it made her feel a little uneasy. When they were here, they seemed just like normal people - well, no, not normal, but still people. In New York, they were more mystery than human.

Laura’s mom started pestering her again to find herself a boyfriend. Aaron got engaged to some girl from two towns over and moved in with her. Old Mrs Jordan who ran the post office died, and was replaced by her niece, Trinity.

And then one Friday afternoon, they came back.

This time, it was Nat who had battle scars. Her right arm seemed to have been broken in at least two places, given that it was completely immobilised in a plaster cast.

“What on earth happened to you?” Laura demanded when the two of them turned up at the hardware store unannounced.

“Nice to see you too,” Clint joked.

Laura blinked at the unfamiliar humour, then flapped a hand at him. “Small talk later, real talk now. Are you alright? You too, mister, don’t think I don’t see you limping. Have you been in an accident or something?”

“Our boss was driving,” said Clint.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Nat added, glaring at him. Cassum swiped a paw in Thea’s direction, and she skipped backwards, letting out a gleeful little noise.

Antohi brushed his tail against the back of Laura’s leg, and she looked down to share a glance with him. “You’ve changed, the two of you. City living done you good?”

“I guess,” said Nat. “But look at you! I love the hair. When did you get it cut?”

Laura raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I’m growing it out again. This is what happens when you leave for months on end. Hey, let me make you dinner tonight - I told you I moved into the apartment above this place, right? We can hang out and catch up.”

It wasn’t as if they’d never left. The difference in Clint was dramatic, but Nat had changed too. She was as lovely and friendly as ever, but sharp too, with an acerbic sense of humour that Clint happily fought back against. They were more comfortable eating spaghetti in Laura’s apartment than they ever had been in their own home the year before.

“So what have you actually been doing?” Laura asked as she filled up the sink to wash the dishes. “You’re obviously both working if it was your boss who got you into a car accident.”

“Really wasn’t his fault,” Nat reiterated. “Other drivers, what can you do?”

This made Clint snort.

“You’re avoiding the question,” Laura sing-songed. “Come on, I’ve got a whole stack of postcards in a drawer and yet somehow I know nothing about what you’ve spent the last year doing - also, I’ve been meaning to ask, why postcards, and why always from other countries? Where do you even get them?”

“Stationery stores,” Nat shrugged. “I like them, they’re cute.”

“I just keep swiping hers,” Clint said.

And so they evaded the question yet again. Nat dragged her into a conversation about town gossip, professing a need to catch up before going out in public. Clint expressed excitement over fixing up the old barn now that they were back in town.

“He’s been actually daydreaming about decorating,” Nat said, with the air of the long-suffering.

“Uh, who was it who bought all those throw cushions last summer?” asked Clint.

“It was still a novelty then!” Nat protested.

“And it isn’t any more? Aw, you’re all grown up, adult Natasha, Nat two-point-oh.”

Laura blinked. “Wait, your full name is Natasha? How the hell did I not know that?”

Cassum and Thea both froze, Nat’s face became perfectly blank for a second, and Clint - he cringed.

“I did not give you permission to tell her that,” Nat said to Clint, and her voice was hard.

He leant forward. “I’m sorry.”

Nat glanced at Laura, who was standing tongue-tied by the draining board, a dishtowel hanging limply from her hand. Antohi's tail was perfectly still, held slightly aloft.

"Вы можете сказать ей свою историю. Но не мое. Понял?"

"Da," said Clint. And then again in English, "I'm sorry."

"Was that - Russian?" Laura asked.

“Yes,” Nat said shortly. But then she took a breath, and smiled. “Sorry about that. Now, tell me how your parents are doing.”

Antohi shifted a little. Laura wondered if she should press, insist that Nat didn’t have to pretend like that, but if she wanted to move past it…

“Oh, they’re fine,” she said. “Dad’s still doing all his photography stuff, and he’s taken up gardening now he’s half-retired, but Mom’s really fussy about it all - she’s practically drawn up a full blueprint of the yard…”

Laura never could remember exactly what excuse Nat used to leave early, only that when she popped over to the farmhouse the next day with a catalogue and a casserole, only Clint was left.

 _Sorry_ , he signed as soon as she arrived. “Just us. Nat had to go back to New York. Crisis at work, somehow it’s only her who can fix it…”

“I freaked her out, didn’t I?” Laura asked glumly.

Clint scratched his head. “Yep. But that’s on - well, it’s not on you.”

At this point, Thea seemed to twig what was in the pot Laura was clutching to her chest and bounded forward. “Wait, you brought food?”

“Sausage casserole,” Laura said to her. “Mostly as an apology for last night.”

“I swear you didn’t feed us as much last summer,” said Clint.

“Well, no, but then I moved out, and I took up cooking a bit more-”

“-and we still can’t cook reliably for one person, so, casserole,” Antohi finished.

Clint smiled. “Right. Casserole.”

It turned out to be a pleasant evening, despite Nat’s absence. Clint’s ASL had improved dramatically in the time spent away, and occasionally he used signs that Laura didn’t know herself, things she had never needed to talk about with her mom. They switched between speech and sign, sometimes halfway through a sentence.

Laura didn’t notice at the time that Thea and Antohi were chatting just as much as she and Clint. It seemed natural, somehow. She did notice, though, that Clint was not as good at changing the subject as his sister.

“How’d Nat get back to New York, anyway?” she asked at one point. “The truck’s still out front.” Clint hesitated, obviously stuck for an answer. Laura levelled a look at him. “Hey, if you don’t want to tell me stuff, you know you can just say that, right?”

His reaction to that was to sigh and scrub his hand over his face. “I need to get better at lying.”

Laura laughed. “Here’s a hint: don’t start by telling the other person that you’re going to be lying to them.”

He had the good grace to look sheepish, which only made her laugh more.

Without Nat there, Laura was able to discover that she liked Clint just as much as his sister. He was a strange sort of guy, sometimes open and honest, and then other times stumbling over lies and refusing to answer questions. He had good days, full of humour and enthusiasm, and bad days, which reminded her of last summer. Sometimes he wouldn’t have the energy or the inclination to speak aloud, so they would sign, or do nothing at all. Sometimes Thea would still be in a chatty mood, and she and Antohi would socialise while Laura caught up on some reading and Clint lay down. Laura offered more than once to leave, but Thea protested, so she took her at her word and stayed.

Once or twice, Clint actually ventured into town, meeting Laura for her lunch break, perhaps having visited the post office or the library beforehand. Gossip around town was once again fully centred on him, but this time it was more along the lines of how _nice_ that young man was, and how nice it was to see him feeling better. The more vicious whispers were saved for Nat, who was clearly abandoning her brother now that he didn’t need her so much, and what a flighty girl she was, to come back for a single day’s visit. Laura didn’t hear these directly, but they weren’t difficult to infer; people were aware that she was friends with the Barton siblings, and insisted on asking her pointed questions about them.

As it turned out, Nat returned only two weeks later. Laura and Clint were out on the veranda, watching fireflies. Antohi was lying on top of Laura’s feet with Thea settled down next to her.

“You know, you don’t have to spend all your time here,” Clint said. “You must have other stuff to do, friends to meet up with.”

“Excuse me, I met up with my friend Katie for lunch yesterday,” Laura protested.

“Well, good.”

“What about you though? Do you have a social life round here you’ve just failed to tell me about?”

Thea laughed, her ears flailing a bit. “The benefit of being here is that we get away from people.”

“Not you,” Clint added hastily.

But Thea wasn’t paying attention to the correction. Her head swivelled towards the road, ears aloft. “You hear that?”

Antohi barked softly in agreement. “Motorbike?”

It was. The headlights had only just started to fall on the house when Clint relaxed and said, “It’s okay, it’s just Nat.”

Laura squinted, but could only make out a vague silhouette. “How on earth can you tell that from this distance? Wait, better question - how could she be driving that with one arm in a cast?”

But he was right. Laura thought she saw a bird of some kind swooping down as the bike pulled up, but it disappeared from view and there was just Nat kicking the bike’s stand into place and Cassum hopping down with her. There was no plaster cast in sight.

“Quick one,” Clint called down.

“Big bonus,” Nat returned. “How d’you like my new wheels?”

“Wow,” said Laura. “Very cool.” She hopped up from her seat and went down the porch stairs on the premise of admiring the bike, but first she turned to Nat and said quietly, “Hey, sorry I freaked you out before you left. I won’t ask again.”

Nat shrugged. “It was Clint’s fault-”

“Heard that!” Thea yelled.

“-and really, you weren’t to know I’d get touchy about it. But thanks.”

~

It was the week following this that Laura finally managed to get both Clint and Nat over for coffee at her parents’ house.

“Uh, my mom might seem a bit… forward?” she warned Clint.

“She’s lovely,” Nat said. “You’ll like her, she’s honest.”

Clint’s eyebrows raised at that, as if it were a surprising quality to find in a person.

“And Dad’s out of town with his camera club, so it’s just the four of us.”

Nat smiled at her. “Stop worrying. It’ll be fine.”

Laura’s mom was waiting at the door when the three of them arrived, and her beaver dæmon was sat up on his hind legs, stretched high and relying heavily on his tail for balance. Knowing her, Laura thought she’d probably been watching for them through the net curtains for the last fifteen minutes.

 _Hello, hello, hello!_ she signed, beaming. She unfolded her hands towards them, pointing at each of them in turn: _How are you?_

They all assured her that they were fine, and then conversation ceased while they took off jackets and shoes and moved through into the sitting room. Nat made a point of looking out at the garden and turning back to Laura’s mother to exclaim over the beautiful flowerbeds.

Mom rolled her eyes in Laura's direction. _You talk too much_ , she signed.

Clint laughed.

 _I’ll make coffee_ , Laura decided

By the time she'd returned from the kitchen with mugs of coffee for Nat and herself, tea for her mom, and a glass of water for Clint, the conversation had moved onto familiar grounds: her mom grilling Nat as to where she and Clint had come from. Of course, Nat was just as good at dodging questions in ASL as she was in English (and probably Russian too), but Thea’s ears were twitching, and she kept glancing up at Clint’s hands, shifting to see him better.

Mom had clearly picked up on this, and she was turning away from Nat and towards Clint, spotting easier prey. She pushed her flat palm towards Clint, tapped her fingers together, and then shook her hands in a question. _What’s your name?_

Clint frowned, and started to fingerspell his name, but he’d only gotten two letters out before Mom was shaking her head and asking again, tapping her fingers more insistently. _Your name, what’s your name_?

“Your name sign,” Laura said aloud.

“Oh.” _I don’t have one_ , he signed.

Mom’s face showed clearly what she thought of that. _I’ll give you one,_ she told him. _You’re Deaf. You need a name._ She turned to Nat. _You too. You’re family._

Whether she meant Clint’s family or her own, she left vague, omitting any possessive gesture. _You are family_. Laura shifted in her seat, prepared to change the subject, but Nat shook her head a little and murmured, “it’s okay.”

The name Mom gave to Clint was simple: a C tapped over his heart. For Nat, though, she looked bluntly at Cassum and then drew three fingers out along each cheekbone before curling them into Ns.

Nat raised her eyebrows. M-A-S-K?

Cassum chittered.

Even Laura was a little surprised. A lot of the Deaf people she’d met, her mother and both maternal grandparents included, had name signs based on their dæmons, but it was more commonly just the name of the animal combined in some way with their initial. The sign for ‘raccoon’ was similar to ‘mask’, signed in the same place over the eyes, but ‘raccoon’ started out with V-shaped fingers above and below the eyes which came together as the hands moved outwards. This was not that.

Her mom nodded. _You sign fluently, but you never say anything,_ she signed. She fingerspelled the word back at Nat: M-A-S-K.

She laughed at the expression on Nat’s face. _It’s not bad. You hearing people, you’re so sensitive. It’s nothing but the truth._

Cassum glanced up at Nat. She sat back on her hind legs and raised her forepaws, tapping her claws together. _We_ _accept that._

Nat nodded, but there was something steely in her eyes as she brought her hands up to ask where Mr Morgan had gone on his camera club trip, and Laura thought that perhaps she should have stopped the discussion after all.

~

The day the beam fell, they were finally getting to work on the barn. Clint had scrambled up to the roof to have a look at all the ancient wooden slats passing for tiles, which would have worried Laura more if he hadn’t seemed to have the acrobatic skills of a monkey. Thea looked funny perched on his shoulder as he made his way up, and Antohi had laughed at her; she had yelled down that it was all very good for him to say from down there on the ground, he was too big to even try this.

“Don’t want to, thanks!” Laura called up.

In the meantime, Nat and Laura were having a look around the walls, knocking on the boards, testing for rot. One fell completely through as Laura tapped it, so she stepped inside to pick up the pieces and drag them out.

“Okay, this building is in much worse condition than the house,” she shouted out to Nat. “You’re gonna have to tear-”

A large crack made her look sharply upwards to see a heavy wooden beam breaking down the middle, Thea perched atop it. She leapt up, back towards the hole in the roof through which she’d come, but the force exerted by her hind legs had the beam giving way and she fell, screeching.

“Thea!”

Antohi was bounding forwards, dragging Laura with him. “Clint!” she shouted, because good lord, he was still on top of the roof, a good fifteen feet up. They’d be torn apart, he would go into cardiac arrest, they would-

“No, stay back!” Thea called. “I’m alr-”

Another heart-rending noise, this one more like a ripping, a wrenching, and the entire section of roof which had been supported by that beam was coming down towards the three of them: Thea, Antohi and Laura.

Then Nat’s voice: “Cassum!”

A cheetah dæmon appeared out of nowhere, barrelling into Antohi, pushing him out of the way. Laura felt hands under her arm, a fierce grip pulling her back, and she stumbled, arms flailing for balance. She tried to call out for Antohi, but the roof had crashed to the ground and thrown up a cloud of dust, and she choked on the murky air.

And then Clint was running in through the open door, past Antohi and the cheetah - seriously, where had the cheetah come from? - and past Laura and Nat - of course it was Nat who’d dragged her back - and towards the pile of shattered wood.

“Cassum, a little help?”

And then the cheetah was a spaniel, nosing over the debris, sniffing. “Here!”

And yes, that was Cassum’s voice, surely, but now she was a chimpanzee, pulling off splintered slats along with Clint until they revealed Thea, unconscious, her left side grazed from shoulder to rump. Laura had crept forward towards Antohi, who pressed himself to her legs.

“Bring her inside,” said Nat. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

“Shouldn’t we take him - her - to a doctor?” Laura said faintly.

They both ignored her. Clint scooped Thea up and carried her away. Nat and Cassum were streaking ahead, and now Cassum was a black cat, trying not to get too far ahead of her human.

Laura shook her head lightly. “What… But that’s…”

Antohi let out a whine low in his throat, but they followed more slowly into the house. Clint had laid Thea on the kitchen countertop, and there was a small monkey who had to be Cassum helping him as he cleaned the dirt away.

“Questions later,” Nat snapped.

Laura stumbled again. “Yes, of course - can I help?”

“Extra pair of tweezers in my make-up bag upstairs. Bedside table.”

Laura took the stairs at a run, Antohi underfoot as always. It took her a minute to find the make-up bag, which was inside a drawer in Nat’s bedside cabinet, and to root through it for the tweezers. When she got back down, Thea had started to stir and was whimpering softly.

“You’re alright, girl,” Clint was saying. “Just a flesh wound.”

“My head,” Thea whined.

“I’ll risk some children’s Tylenol, but nothing stronger,” said Nat, firmly.

“You alright, sweetheart?” Laura asked.

“Oh, fine and dandy,” Thea answered. “Life and soul of the fucking party. Nat, Tylenol?”

Carefully, she held a spoon of Tylenol to her mouth, and Thea lifted her head slightly to lick it up.

“It’ll take time to kick in,” Cassum warned, still crouching over her.

But the atmosphere in the room was losing its tension at breakneck pace. Laura could almost feel the air loosening around her, now Thea was awake and complaining. Indeed, she was keeping up a steady stream of foul language under her breath as Clint picked out splinters, one by one.

Natasha was watching her.

Laura wasn’t sure why she thought _Natasha_ instead of _Nat_ , but she had the distinct sense that this woman wasn’t her friend. The woman with the changing dæmon wasn’t the girl who had cooed over cushions with her, or batted away comments about her love life, or sent her cute little postcards she’d found in stationery stores around New York.

“So,” she said. “I guess you have questions.”

“Only as many as I ever had!” Laura blurted. “You’re - I mean, Cassum, and - Thea, and what on earth do you do when you leave?”

“You don’t have to answer,” Antohi said firmly.

That made Clint laugh: a sudden, sharp bark of a sound. Thea flinched against the noise, and then whimpered as the movement aggravated her injuries.

“I don’t believe you,” Clint said. “I don’t believe you’re just - not pushing for answers.”

“She’s a decent person,” said Natasha, her eyes locked on Laura even as she spoke to Clint. “You just haven’t met many of them. You certainly haven’t met any who weren’t spies.”

Laura’s eyebrows shot up. “Spies?! Um, can I change my mind on you not needing to answer?”

Antohi butted her leg.

“That was a joke,” she added hastily.

There was a pause as everyone wondered how to begin, and then Cassum became a cat and jumped down from the counter to land fluidly in front of Laura, slightly too far away from Nat. “Well,” she said, “that’s our big secret. I never settled.”

“Right,” said Laura. “Okay. That’s, um. Unusual.”

Nat laughed, and it was Nat, this time. “That’s one word for it. That doesn’t freak you out?”

Laura considered. “Can I let you know once I’ve had time to process it?”

Thea lifted her head up. “Well, while you’re still in shock,” she began.

Clint laid down the tweezers. “No.”

“You wanted her to know,” she argued.

“Never said I wanted to tell her.”

“So I’ll tell her!”

“But if she-”

Laura and Antohi were following this like a tennis match, growing ever more bemused. Humans and dæmons could disagree, of course, but to argue like this? They sounded as if they were two… different…

“Why weren’t you hurt?” she interrupted. “When Thea fell through the roof, that must have been some distance. That should have hurt.”

Clint completely shut down. There was no expression on his face, no light in his eyes. Laura moved towards him, reflexively reaching out to him. “Hey, hey. It’s okay.”

He took her hand. He inhaled deeply. He closed his eyes. “We’re severed. I’m severed.”

There was a moment of stillness, and then -

“Oh my god,” said Laura. “Oh my god.”

She couldn’t help it: she tore her hand from his, ran to the kitchen sink and vomited, gagging on the idea, on the notion, on the reality that Clint was - that Thea - that -

“Easy,” said Nat. Her voice wasn’t easy, though; she spoke sharply, critically. Laura tried to get herself under control and couldn’t. It was like thinking of - of disembowelment, of decapitation. It was mutilation, he had been mutilated, they both had because they were separate people now, Thea and Clint -

She gagged again.

“Well, this is flattering,” said Thea from somewhere behind her.

“Thea,” said Clint, warningly. “Cassum, can you take over here?”

Antohi was whining uncontrollably, tail between his legs, hunkering close to the floor. Laura pushed herself back from the sink and reached for him, collapsing to her knees and pulling him close to her, taking comfort in the solidity, the reality, the entirety of him.

And then there was someone at her back, running a hand down her spine. She turned towards them and half-fell into Clint’s arms, clutching at him now instead.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Hey, hey,” he murmured.

They sat there for a little while, Laura crying into Clint’s shirt, and Antohi pressing himself against Laura’s back. Every time she thought she’d got herself under control, the horror and the revulsion would hit her once more, and she would start crying all over again. It took several long, soggy minutes before Laura was feeling composed enough to sniff and sit back.

“Sorry,” she said again.

Clint shrugged. “Could have been worse.”

“Could have been a lot worse,” said Nat. She was sat, cross-legged, next to them, face perfectly blank as she watched.

Cassum had changed back into a primate, but a baboon this time. She had finished extracting the splinters, and now was carefully supporting Thea on the counter so she could lean down to see the scene on the kitchen floor. Antohi pushed off Laura’s back and stretched up to lick Thea’s foot; Laura shivered, but Clint didn’t react at all. Of course, he wouldn’t feel it. She took a deep breath, but held it together.

“Well, then,” she said. “I think that barn might have to be completely torn down and rebuilt.”

Clint huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, probably.”

Nat smiled.

~

Things changed from that moment onwards, but less so than Laura might have expected. Nat seemed a little more relaxed with Cassum flicking through forms as and when she pleased. Clint had slightly fewer bad days - she imagined it must have been quite stressful, always keeping track of where Thea was in order to pretend to be something they weren’t.

(She did know that they were both feeling grateful to her for not reacting worse or running away or something, but she didn’t really like thinking about that. One night in bed, she and Antohi indulged in a bit of speculation as to how other people had reacted in the past, but they had no information and no inclination to ask for more, so the conversation died a quick death.)

It was strange at first, seeing Clint without Thea or Thea without Clint, and it did sometimes make her flinch at the reminder of what had happened to them, but she got used to it. She got used, too, to speaking directly to Thea as her own person, asking her opinions as well as Clint’s.

One of the side effects of this was that sometimes, Antohi would settle down to talk to Thea, leaving Laura distracted and unable to focus on any separate conversation. Once on a Saturday evening, they were walking down the high street, and Thea was talking to Antohi at a mile a minute. Laura caught the odd word, enough to know that she was trying to persuade Antohi that Laura should look into interior design as a future career option. If Laura hadn’t been trying so hard to concentrate on where she was going, she might have missed the man standing in the alleyway by the post office, and the strange belt he was wearing.

“Is that guy actually carrying a sword?” she wondered aloud.

Clint just kept walking, but Thea’s head snapped round, alert in an instant.

“It’s him,” she hissed.

Antohi was looking around now, but Clint put a hand to Laura’s elbow and pushed her along the sidewalk. “Try not to react,” he muttered. “We need to get back to Nat.”

Laura took a deep breath. “Okay,” she whispered.

They walked the rest of the way back to the truck in near silence. Clint stared doggedly ahead, but Thea didn’t have the same self-control, twisting around occasionally to check on the strange man, or perhaps to look for his dæmon. Laura hadn’t noticed her, hadn’t thought to check what form she took.

Clint opened the passenger side door for Laura in a chivalrous move he’d never tried before. “Down in the footwell,” he said to Antohi, and then rounded the truck almost at a jog to get behind the wheel and move off.

“He’s dangerous then?” Laura said.

Clint looked grim. “He was when I was a kid,” he answered. “Best to assume the worst. Text Nat, would you? Say we’re on our way back, and that there’s an unfriendly in town. And then when she texts back, you can tell her that no, we’re not being followed.”

Laura put the whole thing in the first message, and Nat responded by calling her.

“Tell Clint he’s an asshole. How far out are you?”

“We're just leaving town - ten minutes?”

“Five,” Clint corrected, hitting the accelerator as soon as they were outside the town limits.

“Copy that,” said Nat. “Ask Clint if the unfriendly is alone.”

But Thea had heard and answered instead. “Don’t know. He might have hired thugs, but I would guess he’s alone - as far as we know, he’s down on his luck and has delusions of being a supervillain.”

Laura pressed down on the urge to ask half a dozen questions, instead putting the phone on speaker. Clint would still have trouble - his hearing aids didn’t do well with distorted voices - but may as well make it easier for Thea and Nat to talk.

“We won’t rule anything out then,” said Nat. “His target?”

“Clint,” said Thea, immediately. “We grassed on him to the police over a decade ago, he was stealing money from the circus coffers. Cops didn’t care much, but he did. Name’s Jacques Duquesne, goes by the Swordsman. He’d be in his late forties, early fifties now, but don’t underestimate him in close combat.”

“Do remember who you’re talking to,” Nat said archly. “Laura, I want you to keep calm, okay? You’re as safe as you can be with Clint.”

Antohi, squashed into the footwell between Laura’s legs, huffed a little, but Laura just said, “Okay.”

“You’ll be staying with us until this is over. If you have to go into work, one of us will come with you, but it might be worth taking a few sick days. Thea, is she a secondary?”

“He saw her,” Thea confirmed, which allowed Laura to fill in the missing word.

“Secondary target?” She took a deep breath. “Right. Okay.”

Nat barrelled on. “Last question, Thea, is there any reason he would recognise the widow?”

“I… don’t think so? But we last met him more than ten years ago, and the files are sketchy, so.”

Nat didn’t respond directly to that. “Keep the line open. Come straight into the living room when you get here.”

They returned to find Nat and Cassum with two laptops open, ethernet cables trailing over countertops. One screen was showing information in a way that made Laura think _database_ , scrolling through lists of dates, state names, goodness only knew what else; Cassum was crouched in front of the other as a small monkey, using her paws to scroll down through an image search of posters for a circus, all featuring the Swordsman. His costume was reminiscent of an eighteenth century pirate, with billowing pants and a military-looking jacket, and he had a black bandana covering half his face, somewhat like Zorro. His dæmon, Laura now saw, was some sort of large, slender dog, always pictured snarling at his feet. Sometimes the Swordsman was accompanied by other figures, particularly archers: one was called Trick Shot and had a noble-looking horse for a dæmon, and another was a blond boy dressed in vibrant purple, the Amazing Hawkeye. It was his dæmon that caught Laura’s eye: a plump, bright-eyed, black-tailed jackrabbit.

She had never seen Thea looking so healthy.

Now was not the time to bring it up, though. She stood, fidgety, by the counter, as Nat and Thea fired questions back and forth at each other: where had Duquesne last been seen? Criminal record? Likely aliases, likely allies? Preferred weapons beside the sword? Could he just be after money? Meanwhile, Clint had disappeared up to his room; when he came down, he was dressed all in black, wearing sturdy boots, and with a sleek black bow and bristling quiver slung over his shoulder. He had an expression like thunder until he caught Laura’s eye, and then he rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously.

“You kept up the archery then,” she said.

He smiled a little. “You can take the boy out of the circus...” He turned to Nat. “You not getting changed?”

Nat shrugged, still in pale blue jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt and Chucks. “I’m hoping he’ll underestimate me.”

Clint shrugged. “We had some pretty awesome female fighters at Carson’s.”

“So I’ll play it up. Will he have done his research around town, know your sister’s here?”

“Must have done,” said Thea. “How else would he know Clint was here? Might even think that’s Laura, unless someone mentioned your hair.”

Now, Nat turned to Laura. “You don’t have a concealed carry permit. Have you ever used a gun?”

How did she know that? But Laura just shook her head. Suddenly, this gap in her life skills seemed like a very large oversight, where before it had been a vaguely principled disinterest.

“We’ll work on that in future,” Nat said. “For now, you’re going to stick with us - you’re staying here tonight, and if you must go into work tomorrow, Clint’s coming with you.”

Antohi huffed.

“What?” Nat snapped at him.

“It’s nothing,” Laura said, but Antohi spoke over her: “Do we have to put the bait in our workplace, directly below our home?”

“So stay here,” Cassum rejoined, “and you don’t have that problem.”

“I’ll go to your flat, pick up some clothes and toiletries and things.” Nat’s tone brooked no argument. “And then I’m going to call your boss to let him know you’re sick and staying here.”

Laura nodded, feeling thoroughly outmanoeuvred. “So, what did you do in the circus?”

Cassum flicked into something so small that Laura lost sight of her for a second. When her eyes had adjusted, she saw a tiny black scorpion, tail lifted. Laura cursed herself. “Right, sorry, I didn’t ask.”

Nat nodded curtly. “Thea, watch the track. He’s showing off, we may as well assume he’ll continue. Clint, eyes on Laura.”

“Obviously,” he said.

She did nothing so much as saunter out of the house, Cassum a raccoon once more, trotting happily behind her. Laura watched her go, feeling thoroughly out of her depth.

“I…”

Thea had scampered after Nat to keep watch, but Clint was taking ‘eyes on Laura’ very literally so far.

“Go on,” he prompted.

“Well, I don’t know if this is a silly question, but couldn’t we just call the police?”

Clint smiled, which only made Laura feel sillier. “Well, for one thing, he hasn’t actually done anything yet. I haven’t got a restraining order or anything that he could have breached. For another, Nat and I have reasons for not wanting to get the cops involved.”

Laura stored that away carefully. “Right. Okay.”

Clint took a moment to look at her, and at Antohi, who was sat right on top of her feet. “Are you okay?”

She ran a hand over Antohi’s head. “Um. Can I get back to you on that one?”

She had plenty of time to consider the matter. Nat came back without incident, a duffel full of Laura’s belongings over her shoulder.

“We saw him,” Cassum reported. “Well, I did. Snuck out the window. He was talking to your boss, Laura. No sign of the sword, dressed in civilian clothing, but he has a French accent - you might have mentioned that,” she said to Thea, “and the dæmon’s a golden jackal, not a wolf. You said he was born in Asia?”

“Yeah, Southeast,” Clint confirmed. “French Indochina. Never did know which country exactly.”

Natasha nodded. “We have no idea what his timescale is so we’ll err on the side of caution. I’ll take first watch, then Thea, then Clint. We’ll sleep down here tonight. Laura, what’s your boss’s number?”

Laura dug out her cellphone and scrolled through her contacts to the right one. Nat stepped away slightly before pressing call.

“Hi, is that Mr Walker?” she asked. “Hi, Ben, it’s Nat Barton here. Listen, I’ve got Laura over and she’s really really sick, like, she’s in the bathroom now. She’s going on about how she’s got a shift tomorrow, but really-”

A pause.

“No, I mean, I hope it’s just food poisoning, because she’s definitely getting something out of her system, but she’s burning up, seriously. And she hasn’t eaten anything today that I haven’t, so-”

And again.

“Oh my god, thank you, I was hoping you would say that. I mean, if it passes then I’m sure she’ll be in on Monday whatever I say - you know what she’s like - but I’m going to keep her here overnight just in case, I’ll probably call the doctor in the morning if she’s no better. Thank you so much. Okay. You too, Mr Walker. Alright. God bless.”

She snapped the phone shut and handed it back to Laura. “You’re off for the whole week if you need it.”

“Thanks,” said Laura, faintly. Between putting down the phone and giving it to Laura, Nat’s whole voice had changed. Talking to her boss, it was pitched higher, slightly faster, with much more variation in intonation, yet it still sounded perfectly natural to Laura’s ears, perfectly Nat. She tried to think back to when the Barton siblings first turned up in the store, to hear again in her mind exactly how Nat had sounded then, but couldn’t quite recall.

“Nat,” she said. “Um. If he’s spoken to my boss, about me - I mean, we’re assuming about me, right? - then, um. Are my parents safe?”

The silence spoke volumes.

“Right,” she said. “Right. Okay. Um. Can we - can you do something about that?”

It took another few long seconds before Nat spoke up. “There are options. We move you to their house, guard you there. We get them out here. We call in back-up, make this…” But there she trailed off, and Laura understood that for whatever reason, back-up wasn’t really an option.

“But they’ll ask questions,” Thea said. “Your parents, they’ll want answers which-”

“-not that that’s more important,” Clint interrupted. “It’s just that the more we draw attention to them now, the more problems they’ll - you’ll - run into down the line.”

“Dad might not ask,” said Laura. “If I - I don’t know, can I just tell them to stay inside?”

Nat turned away from Laura, very deliberately, looking straight at Clint. “We need to go proactive, then. Tonight or tomorrow?”

Clint considered.

“Tomorrow,” he decided. “I want daylight on our side. He will too, mind, since he’s outnumbered-”

“He doesn’t know he’s outnumbered,” Nat countered.

“So he’ll be cautious,” Thea finished. “All this - showboating. It looks like arrogance, coming into our home, Laura’s workplace, but he knows Clint, remember. And if he’s done any searching on us since, he’ll know that we’re out of his sort of circles. He’s relying on Clint’s conscience.”

Cassum, who had been a raccoon until this point, suddenly became a brown hare, bigger than Thea, with thinner ears and a white tail rather than black. Nat almost seemed surprised; she glanced at her, pausing before she said, “Well, I suppose I’m in no position to complain about the strength of your conscience.”

A second later she was flint again: “Clint, go fetch some bedding. Laura, you can make us all some food - protein and carbohydrates. If you want to text your parents, just tell them what I told your boss. Thea, you can I can start working on action plans.”

Laura didn’t text, because a bout of food poisoning wasn’t something she would have told her mom about anyway for fear of coddling. Instead, she made sandwiches while Clint dragged some blankets and pillows down from upstairs. Ten minutes later, Nat, Clint and Thea were continuing with their action plans - whatever that entailed - while Laura just sort of fussed. There really wasn’t anything else to do; she set up three neat beds out of sofa cushions and pillows, washed up their plates, and eventually just curled up, settling in for what had to be the most tense slumber party she had ever attended. And in between worrying about Duquesne, and surreptitiously peeking at whoever was currently on watch, Laura felt the intrusion of more prosaic worries - suddenly, she was self-conscious about how much Antohi shifted around as he tried to find a comfortable sleeping position, and the possibility that she would snore, and what a silly thing it was to worry about when their lives were at risk. Surely events like these should happen outside her real life, away from her physical body, her home, her family. Surely snoring and swordsmen shouldn’t both be problems at the same time.

She slept fitfully at best, disturbed by any flicker of movement and sound, Antohi snuffling every time she jerked awake. It took until nearly dawn for her to give up entirely, when the light was grey and sluggish, and Clint was sitting, perfectly still, by the front window.

“Mind if I join you?” Laura whispered.

When he moved, it was smooth, but slow. Laura imagined sheets of ice cracking and falling away. “Sure.”

She sat an arm's length away, mindful of the bow laid across his lap and the quiver strung over his shoulder. On closer inspection, she realised there was a lump under his jacket, too - that had to be a gun.

"This is bizarre," Laura whispered. "This whole... I think, I think I thought that if I was ever in a situation where people had weapons, as in people using weapons against each other rather than bears, I'd be on the side without them."

He didn't look at her, still alert, but he signed an apology out towards the window. The first sign she had ever shown him - a fist rubbed over his breastbone.

"No, it's - well, it's not exactly okay, but it's not your fault. And, I'm sorry too. For being a, a liability, I guess you'd call it."

"Likewise, not your fault. Kind of ours, mine and Nat's. Should've - well, I don't know. Either told you the truth first off, or just not got you so involved. One of the two."

Antohi snorted softly, and half of a grin lifted Clint's mouth. "Fine. You can make your own decisions."

"It's not that," said Laura. "More like, as if you could have managed without me."

"Huh."

They lapsed into quiet for a moment. Clint continued watching the driveway and Laura continued watching Clint. He had a calm sort of stillness to him, and his breaths were so long and slow and steady that Laura could barely see his chest moving, even as the sky brightened and the morning broke.

Antohi shifted by her side, and Laura realised that he wasn’t watching her and Clint; instead, he was looking at Thea where she slept a few feet behind them, in a little nest of duvets.

“That must have been strange at first,” she said. “Being awake while Thea was sleeping. Being…”

Clint grimaced. “Ah, Nat did a pretty good job of making sure I wasn’t alone,” he said. “And it wasn’t the loneliness, really, it was…” But he didn’t - perhaps couldn’t - finish. “You know, this is the first time you’ve actually asked me about it,” he said instead. “First time you’ve asked any of us about anything, honestly.”

Laura’s eyes closed briefly. She really was tired. “Mom always said I was a terrible gossip. As in, I was terrible at providing her with gossip. I’d say I’d met up with a friend, and she would ask how that friend’s parents had enjoyed their vacation, and it just hadn’t occurred to me to ask.”

“Yeah, but that’s a bit different to - well, to not asking about…”

He trailed off, leaving Laura to fill in the blanks: his severance, his and Nat’s mysterious jobs, Nat’s background, why Cassum was the way she was…

“I suppose,” she said. “But - well, I asked now, didn’t I? Not all of it, but some of it. And you guys made it pretty clear that you didn’t want to answer, so…”

Finally, he turned away from the window and smiled at her, a quiet, burning thing. “You know, one of these days, I’ll sit down and tell you a story. Not a description of a place, or a time. A real story, of something that happened to me. In fact, uh, I was kinda thinking about asking you out for coffee or something?"

Laura squinted. "Is that a trick question?"

"What?"

"You don't like coffee."

"Yeah, I meant, like. Well, less about the coffee, more about the asking you out thing."

It took Laura several long, slow blinks to get up to speed. "Oh. Right." She found she wasn't surprised at all, though she hadn't exactly been expecting it either. It made sense for him to ask her, just as it would have made sense for him never to ask. "Uh, sure."

He glanced back to the window, to her, to the window again. "Really?"

"Yeah," she smiled. "Really."

From behind them, laughter. "Kiss her, you blockhead."

Too sleepy to jump, Laura pouted in Thea's direction. "We were building up to that, shush."

But the moment was gone. Clint grinned, sheepish, and turned back once again to the window. "Later. Once we've dealt with Duquesne."

Nat, when she woke, was keen to get going. ‘Proactive’ apparently meant flushing Duquesne out, getting him away from populated areas. Step two wasn't spoken aloud, though Nat, Clint and Thea all seemed pretty clear on what it would be.

It was only as Nat was tying up her sneakers to head out again that Laura finally asked, “So, what are you planning on doing with Duquesne when you find him?”

Clint and Thea exchanged a glance, but Nat didn't even look up from her shoes. “Whatever we have to,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s a crap answer,” said Clint. “Look, Laura. I’m not saying the plan is to kill him, but I’m pretty sure his plan is to kill me, so if it comes down to it, yeah. We would kill him. If we don’t have to, if we can disable him and get him to leave, then-”

“Then he would still know where we live,” Nat pointed out, straightening up. “And exactly who to target and how many thugs to bring with him next time.”

“I was going to suggest tipping off the authorities about his last known whereabouts,” Clint said.

Thea shook her head. “She’s right. He’ll disappear before anyone can catch up to him if we give him even the slightest head start. If we want him out of the picture-”

“Okay,” said Laura. “I get it.”

Nat nodded sharply and pulled a jacket on. "Clint, keep eyes on-"

"Eyes on Laura, I know."

Nat nodded, and turned to leave, but Laura stepped forward and grabbed her hand. "Hey. Careful, alright?"

The look Nat turned on her was only just short of patronising. "Laura, you really don't know how good I am."

Laura raised an eyebrow. "And I don't care, either. You be careful."

Antohi reinforced this by licking the top of Cassum's head. She took a second to respond, but eventually lifted her head to return the gesture, licking under Antohi's chin.

Nat's face was blank again. That seemed to be happening a lot. "Okay," she said shortly, and then she was out the door and gone.

~

It was a strange combination of stagnation and suspense that held them for the next few hours. Laura did fall asleep for a little bit, the tension trumped by its own weight. Every time she woke, it was to see Clint or Thea watching her, the other one moving from window to window. Antohi lay slumped across her legs, constantly pricking his ears or lifting his head, only to dismiss it as a false alarm and try to settle down again.

“We may be overreacting,” Clint told her at one point. “In fact, we probably are. But, you know-”

“Better safe than sorry,” Laura finished.

They settled back into silence for a while, until Thea finally shook her ears, and stretched.

"I'm going to go and patrol a bit," she decided. “Might be able to hear something more from outside. Yell if you need me.”

Clint caught her eye and held her there for a moment, but eventually nodded. Thea darted forward and bumped his knee before she turned and snuck out of the front door, which Clint held open for her. Antohi whined softly to see her go.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Clint said. “She does a lot of scouting for us, when we’re…”

Laura nodded. It was only dawning on her very slowly that this was their job. Fighting, planning fights. Nat’s broken arm, Clint’s trauma. Thea. Well, she’d suspected Clint was military, and she thought she could learn anything about Nat and not be surprised.

“It’s Sunday,” Clint said suddenly. “Your parents will expect you at church.”

“Oh god, I forgot about that,” Laura said. “Hang on, I’ll text mom, tell her I’m still sick.”

She was concentrating very hard on how to say ‘I have food poisoning’ in the least suspicious way possible when a muffled shriek came from outside. Laura looked up from her phone and frowned, unsure, but Antohi was on his feet in an instant. "That was Thea!"

"Is she okay?" Laura asked Clint, before remembering that of course he wouldn't know.

In a flash, he had his bow out and an arrow nocked. "Antohi, which direction?"

Antohi bounded over to the back door, Laura stumbling behind him, stuffing her cell back in her pocket. He whined until Clint wrenched the door open, letting the arrow drop to do so, and then pointed towards a dark hedgerow some thirty yards back. "That way," he said with certainty.

Clint's face was dark. "I can't leave you," he growled.

"So I'll come with," Laura said. “Clint, it’s _Thea._ ”

But whether or not he would have agreed, Laura never found out. A faint disturbance of the air had Antohi barking a warning, just as something came hurtling through the open door to strike Clint in the head. A knife, Laura realised, but it had hit him handle-first, sending him staggering backwards. Laura had only just taken a breath to scream when it was followed by another, slicing cleanly through his bowstring and then spinning off, clattering somewhere behind them. The bow itself rebounded, striking Clint in the ear, pushing him to the floor. It must have nicked his hearing aid, because in the corner of her vision, Laura saw it flick out and tumble to the ground.

Antohi was barking wildly, panicking just as Laura was. What should she do? Kneel down to help Clint, stay on her feet, move away, stay in place?

She was still frozen when the Swordsman grabbed her.

~

It was over quickly. Antohi was bigger than the jackal, but she had the advantage of training or of practice; it took only a few seconds for her to have her jaws ready to clamp over his throat. For her part, Laura felt like she was going to faint as adrenaline and overstimulation made a mess of her brain. Duquesne had dragged her several feet from the house before she could even think of reacting, yet another knife pressed under her chin.

"Come closer and I will kill her!" Duquesne shouted.

Clint was in the doorframe, recovered enough to have his gun out and aimed directly at them. Laura felt a fresh wave of terror as she stared down its length, realising that she was being used as a human shield as well as a hostage.

"Let her go, Jacques," Clint called. "It's me you want, she has nothing to do with it."

How cliché, Laura thought. And faintly - how strange this world was, of medieval weaponry and scripted tropes, both predictable and chaotic, real and yet utterly surreal.

She wondered what she looked like, if her face had remembered how to convey fear.

“So come and get her!” Duquesne responded.

And then they were around the corner of the building, out of bullet range, and Duquesne had one hand in her hair, yanking her towards the barn. The goddamn barn, with a hole in the roof and in the wall - why would you hole up there with an archer, no, a gunman in play?

“Come and get her!” Duquesne yelled again.

But there was no response. Laura could hear nothing but the breeze and Antohi’s panting. Duquesne snorted.

“Snipers,” he said. “We will have to wait, mademoiselle.”

She cooperated as he tied her up, hanging limply, watching the jackal dæmon as it snapped at Antohi. Oh god, was Clint okay? Laura could only imagine the tension in a strung bow, how much pressure it would suddenly release if its string was severed. How that would feel if it struck you in the head, directly after being struck with a spinning knife?

The jackal leapt, suddenly, and Antohi fell to the ground. Laura shrieked, and the Swordsman laughed.

"So you are the girlfriend. Laura. Do you know what you are kissing, little friend?"

Laura wished she could think of some witty response, or defend Clint, or _something_ , but her mind was completely blank, wiped clean with fear. Duquesne crouched down, leaning closer.

"Un homme incisé. A severed man. Do you not feel the disgust quand il te baise?"

He was breathing these words into her face, hot and damp and hateful. He was close enough to - headbutt? To spit on? But Antohi was still beneath the jackal, her jaws hovering over his throat. Laura blinked away tears, which rolled obligingly down her cheeks.

"Ah, chérie, t'inquiète! You want your boyfriend to come and tell you it's not true? He'll come for you soon. You want this all over? It will be."

"He'll kill you," Laura whispered. "Why would you-"

Duquesne jerked back, and for a second Laura was afraid that she'd made a terrible mistake, but then he threw back his head and laughed.

"You think that I care? Yes, he is young and strong and can kill from a mile away, do you think that it is important?"

Laura stared at him. "You want to die?"

"Non, ma petite. I want him to kill me. Without an officer telling him to neutralise me, without an excuse or a warrant or a pardon."

It occurred to Laura that defending her would be a pretty good excuse, but she kept that quiet.

"Ah. Now that makes much more sense. Thank you for that."

Duquesne whirled around, drawing the sword in the same motion. "Ah. La sœur."

Natasha smiled. "That's me."

She stepped forward, away from the gaping hole in the wall where she must have entered. She was dressed just as she had been that morning, jeans and a tee, and dirty sneakers. Laura couldn't see any weapons on her.

"Nat-"

"Hush, Laura, it's alright," she said, her eyes firmly on Duquesne. "Seems you and I have something in common," she said to him. "We both opted for suicide by Hawkeye. He ended up adopting me, though. I imagine he'll have much less use for you."

“Sale pute,” Duquesne spat. Laura didn’t understand the words, but Natasha clearly did.

“J’suis pas une pute,” she said, smirking. “Moi, je suis une veuve. Une veuve noire. Peut-être t’en connais l’histoire?”

She looked lethal in cotton and denim. Her sneakers were scuffed, the hems of her jeans were frayed, and her hair was parted sweetly to the side, hanging down the length of her spine in a single, girlish plait, but all Laura could think was that cute little raccoon Cassum looked out of place at her side: this woman should be accompanied by a viper, or a tarantula - something that waited, poised and tense, to strike.

Duquesne missed the memo. He hurled the knife at Natasha who - unbelievably - caught it, snatching it out of the air and throwing it up once again only to grab it more securely in her hand.

That was their starting pistol: suddenly, they were a whirl of motion. The jackal sprang at Cassum just as Natasha flew at Duquesne. The sword flashed, but it seem cumbersome and heavy in comparison to Natasha - all the armour in the world couldn't have defended her as well as her own speed.

"Where's Hawkeye?" the jackal snapped at Cassum, succeeding in pinning her. In response, Cassum simply disappeared, switching into some minuscule animal before flickering back into raccoon form, throwing the jackal off-balance.

"Not here," she snarled back. She disappeared again, reappearing on top of the jackal, scratching its eyes, tearing one of its ears.

Antohi was itching to go to them and help, Laura knew - he was up and pointing, tense, but they were too far away. Unless he pulled Laura over, he wouldn't reach them.

As for Laura, she was some place just to the left of panic. Natasha was clearly the better fighter, but it was less the logic and more the surreality that was keeping her from properly freaking out. She watched the fight with detachment, even with an appreciation for the aesthetic of it. The beams of light from between slats and boards danced over the fighters, and every move lifted billowing clouds of sawdust from the floor.

And in her detached state, she heard engines, handbrakes. Boots.

"Alright, this is armed police, we've got this building surrounded. Everyone inside, get down, hands on your head."

There was barely time for a malicious grin to flicker over Natasha's face before she was screaming. "Oh my god, help us, you have to get in here, he's got a freaking sword!"

That was all the cue the cops needed. Nat threw herself down onto the ground just as the door burst open - and flew right off its rusty hinges. Laura blinked at the tableau: Duquesne with his sword raised, Nat curled up on the floor with her hands raised to protect her face, Cassum pinned under the jackal.

A gunshot; Duquesne dropped to duck it, and two more cops rushed forward to wrestle the sword out of his grip and put him in handcuffs.

"Miss Morgan! Laura!"

The officer who rushed forward to untie her was young - he'd only been a couple of years ahead of her at school, Laura realised. "Johnny! Oh my god, thank god, thank god."

"Shush, you're okay, you're alright. Let's get you out of these ropes. You hurt at all?"

"Bruised, maybe, but that's it." Laura looked wildly around for Nat. What was she supposed to be saying, what shouldn't she be saying? Questions couldn't hurt, could they? "Where's Clint? Johnny, have you seen Clint?"

The ropes fell away, and she suddenly had a lap full of Antohi, licking her hands first and then her neck and face. That was the last straw - suddenly, Laura found herself in floods of tears, sobbing with all her energy into Antohi's floppy ears, digging her fingers in his fur. She had yet to get up off the floor, she realised.

"Laura! Laura, are you okay?"

"Clint!"

And there he was, wrapping himself around her back as Antohi crowded her front, and whispering fast in her ear: "You don't know who he is, he grabbed you from the house, was asking for me. Nat came looking for you, he threatened her. You're my girlfriend."

Thank goodness. A little clarity. "Okay," she muttered, and then gave herself up to crying again. "Clint, Clint."

"Hey sweetheart, hey." He pressed a kiss to her temple, careful to avoid Antohi. "It's okay, he was after me, but the police have got him now. It's okay."

She wanted to ask how Thea was, but she couldn't, that was a bizarre thing to ask an entire person. "Where's Nat?" she asked instead.

"Talking to one of the officers. She's okay, I checked. Sounds like the police got here just in time, though."

"Yeah," Laura said. Thea popped into sight, one ear torn, but not badly, and there was another wave of emotion. Laura took several deep breaths, controlling herself, but found she didn't have anything to say other than "Clint."

"You're okay," he said steadily. "Officer, can we go talk to my sister? Is that alright? Might help calm her down."

"Sure, sure," said Johnny. "Come on, I'll take you."

Nat was a sight when Laura got to her. Her face was blotchy, with mascara tracks down her cheeks. Her hair was all over the place, and she was covered in dirt. Cassum was shaking, too, chittering nonstop and practically sitting on Nat's feet.

"Oh my god, Laura," she said, leaping on her, tripping right over Cassum. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, what about you?"

"Same, he didn't really hurt me. But it's weird, I felt like I _knew_ him, his name's Jack, right? No, he was French, Jacques? Clint wrote me all about him when he was in the circus-" She turned back to the cop. "Oh my god, is that why he had me and Laura, like hostages for Clint? But that was years ago!"

Laura was still holding her arm. “Wait, what?"

"Clint called the cops on Jacques ’cause he was stealing from the circus!" Nat said, all in a rush. "I was tiny, like eight, so I was still in the system, but Clint was working, and-"

"Fits with what your brother's been telling us, miss," the cop interrupted. "Sounds like this guy's been waiting to get his own back on young Mr Barton for a long time."

"Oh my god," Nat said. "Oh my god."

Clint had caught up to them now, and Nat threw herself at him too, hugging him tightly.

"Woah, Nat!" he said, wrapping his arms around her much more gingerly. "It's okay, it's all over now."

"I'll give you some privacy," the cop said. "Just let us know when you're ready to come up to the station and give your statements, yeah?"

As soon as he was out of hearing distance, Nat pulled back. Her body language didn't change at all, still frazzled and over-anxious, but her voice lowered and flattened out. "What the hell?" she demanded of Clint. "I had that covered, you know I did."

"I know-"

“It was Laura’s idea,” Thea interrupted, sitting next to Clint's feet. “Just, call the cops on him. We don't have to press charges or anything, no need to get them involved in us."

“They already have a warrant out on him in this state - theft, fraud, avoiding justice," Clint continued. "They’ll arrest him for that, and leave us alone."

"You hope," Nat snarled. But she was already recalculating, adjusting. "If they ask for a reason why we're not pressing charges, Laura, you don’t want to cause your parents all that trouble, and Clint, you’re just happy to know he’s behind bars and away from your poor, defenceless sister and girlfriend.”

“But - will that be enough?” Laura asked.

Nat pulled a face. “Clint's lucky I owe him, we'll leave it at that. If they probe our backgrounds too much, they’ll come across some brick walls, some gaping holes. For example, Duquesne doesn't know me, so Clint, we need to be clear that I was still in the system when you ran away with the circus. But if we play it right, they won’t need to look into anything. Two pretty white girls, the police will be all too happy to help us out. And it does save on cleaning up a lot of mess ourselves.” She looked to Clint. “Your call if we want to get a bit of help mopping up the last drops. Squashing the interest.”

Clint considered. Thea hopped up at his knees, like a dog begging for attention. He crouched to run his fingers gently down the length of her uninjured ear, and she nodded, once. He held her gaze for another few seconds before straightening back up.

“Call Coulson,” he said. “But let’s see how unofficial we can keep it.”

Nat nodded, already bringing her cellphone up to dial, positioning herself so the cops' view of her was obscured by Clint and Laura.

Laura looked up at Clint. “So. I’m your girlfriend? And that was important information the police might question me on?”

He had the grace to look a little sheepish. “Well, it makes for a better narrative.”

“That’s a story I’m going to tell one day. How did you get together, oh, he said it would make for a better narrative.”

“Well, first I asked you out for coffee, which I don’t drink.”

Laura giggled, which just started her crying again. “Oh my god, I’m a mess, I’m sorry.”

He laughed at that, and wrapped his arms around her. “You’re allowed. First hostage situation and a new boyfriend all in one day, you’re definitely allowed.”

~

It was strange how quickly everything settled back to normal. Within a week, they were back to construction work, finally pulling the barn down before it could become the location for any new disaster. Clint whined over his bowstring for a while, but once it was replaced became very enthused about getting Laura to give archery a try.

Her first arrow got halfway towards the target, and then plopped to the ground.

“Good,” he said.

“Liar.”

“It was good. For a first shot. You’ll get better.”

She smiled, and plucked up the courage to kiss him.

~

Only once did Laura freak out over the whole Swordsman thing. Nat had talked her into getting a concealed carry license, and when her mom saw the certificate lying on Laura’s kitchen counter, they’d had one hell of a fight about it, ending with Laura storming out and driving over to the farmhouse.

“She doesn’t get it!” Laura complained. “If I'd had any interest in hunting, she'd be fine, but I don't, so she - she has no idea-”

“Honey, of course she doesn’t get it,” Clint interrupted, “exactly because she has no idea.”

Laura stared for a second, and then started to cry.

“Oh, Laura,” he said, but Nat was gathering her into her arms.

“Clint, go and get started on some dinner, will you? Laura, come and sit down, come on, now.”

Laura let herself be guided towards a sofa, sniffling and watching cat-formed Cassum head-butting Antohi’s chest, curling close to him.

“How would you like us to support you here?” Nat said, gently. “We could speak to your parents, explain a bit more about what happened. If the gun permit bothers you as well as your mom, we can leave that, teach you other ways of defending yourself.”

“I don’t know,” said Laura. “Mostly I just want…”

She stopped, unsure.

“Not to be held hostage again,” Antohi offered.

“Understandable,” Cassum agreed.

Laura reached down to stroke Antohi’s ear, running it through her fingers.

“If you want us to leave you alone after this, we will.” Laura looked up sharply, but Nat stopped her. “It needs saying. If you can’t deal with this, if you want us away from your family, whatever. We can leave.”

“I’m not going to ask you to do that,” Laura said. “Like, never. And you can quote me on that.”

Cassum shifted into a pigeon, and trilled low in her throat, still settled by Antohi’s belly. When Nat smiled, it was with an air of laughing at herself for the reaction, and after only a few seconds, Cassum flicked into the form of a blackbird and darted up to sit on Nat’s shoulder. The smile died from Nat’s face.

“You know why Clint called the cops instead of handling Duquesne ourselves? Why he didn't want our boss getting involved any more than necessary?”

Antohi shivered, and Laura laid a hand on his back. “I thought it was because I was, uh, not keen on the idea of killing him.”

“Close. It’s because it keeps our cover up. Means we can stay, keep using this place as our base. That’s something that Clint really wants.”

“What about you?”

“Me?” Nat sounded surprised to be asked. “I like it here, sure.”

Antohi cocked his head to one side.

“That didn’t actually answer the question,” said Laura.

Nat smiled. “No.”

They lapsed into silence. Laura thought that was the only answer she would get, until Cassum jumped back down to sit in front of Antohi.

“We do want to stay,” she said. “Not full time, and probably not forever. But for now.”

Laura felt like she was missing something. Not a new feeling, but…

“Okay, going wild with the hypotheticals here, but if me and Clint do - whatever, you know this will never stop being your home, right? I’m never going to chuck you out of a house you basically designed. Anyway, you’re his sister.”

Nat laughed, the lower sound which Laura was only just now realising was her natural laugh. “You know I’m not, right?”

Antohi nudged Cassum with his nose. “Yeah, you are,” he said.

“Yeah, you are.”

The two of them turned around to see Thea in the doorway. “If you want, obviously, but it’s kind of true.”

But that was too much for Nat. She stood abruptly, and left the room, brushing past Clint as he walked into the room.

 _What?_ he signed.

 _We scared her,_ Laura signed back. _Emotions._

“Ah.”

Thea and Antohi both looked up just before Laura heard Nat’s motorbike roar to life.

“She’ll be back,” Thea said.

Laura nodded; she wasn’t too worried. There were some things you couldn’t go through without guaranteeing a lifelong relationship, and she thought either the whole hostage situation or their decoration of the house probably counted. Maybe a combination of the two.

“You feeling alright now?” Clint asked, sitting next to her.

Laura nodded, and Antohi leant down to nuzzle Thea.

“I know you didn’t sign up for all of our shit,” Clint said.

“Look, Nat’s already done the ‘if you want us to leave we will’ speech, no more noble crap today please.”

He laughed. “You’re so practical.”

“I work in a hardware store, and my dæmon is a border collie. Surely this isn’t news.”

“Emotionally practical. All kinds of practical. You know what I mean.”

She laughed, because she thought she did know, and leaned over to kiss him. But as she did, Thea leapt up to Clint’s lap, and Laura found her bare hand brushing lightly over her ears. She jumped back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” she said.

“What?” asked Clint.

“She just touched me,” Thea explained. She twitched her ears, turned her head a few times. "That was weird.”

“Weird?!” Laura repeated. “I’m so sorry, that was a complete accident-”

But Thea just looked curious. “Touch me again?"

Laura couldn't help looking at Clint first. "Really?"

"Really," Thea insisted. Clint just nodded.

Slowly, Laura put out a hand and stroked Thea's back, lightly, barely brushing the fur. She’d never touched another dæmon before, and it wasn’t what she’d expected. There was no emotional surge, no lights behind her eyelids. It was just… She was just stroking Thea.

"I don't feel anything," said Thea. "Just the physical sensation."

"Shouldn't be a surprise, should it?" said Clint.

There was something so unbearably sad about that. Laura left one hand on Thea's back, and with her other reached out to touch Clint's face. "Well, I like you both," she said.

Clint smiled. ”That's alright then.”

Antohi thumped his tail enthusiastically, and Thea laughed, hopping directly onto his back. “Come on,” she said, “Clint’s got the slow cooker going, and I want to get the ground floor of the barn cleared out so the basement’s still accessible. We can get that done by sundown.”

“You mean me, Laura and Antohi can get that done,” Clint grumbled. “I don’t see you helping.”

“Build me a trailer and I will,” she retorted.

Laura laughed at the both of them, and got back to work.

~

Laura first met Phil Coulson in the post office. She was picking up stamps, determined to stop buying them one by one when Clint and Nat were away, when Antohi pricked up his ears and started sniffing.

“Gun,” he muttered. "And I don't know the dæmon."

Laura looked around, expecting to see a cop, or maybe one of the farmers from the other side of town, but instead there was just old Miss Belagua from the library, and a nondescript man in a slightly rumpled suit. His dæmon, a stocky badger, was watching her. A couple of months ago, she might have gone over and asked who he was visiting in town, but Antohi smelt a gun on him, and Laura decided it was only paranoia if you didn’t weren’t the Bartons' best friend.

She fished her cellphone out of her pocket, flipped it open and sent a text to both Nat and Clint: _suit in post office w me ?!_ She wasn’t really sure what else to say.

“Morning, Laura. Thirty-three cents?”

Laura started, looking up at Trinity, who had already picked up a single first class stamp. “Uh, no. Can I buy two books, please?” Antohi, by her side, was shifting uneasily, trying not to look directly at the man standing behind them.

Trinity raised her eyebrows. Her black cat dæmon peered down at Antohi from where he was perched upon the counter. “Early for Christmas cards.”

“Planning ahead,” Laura smiled. She dug into her purse for her wallet, but froze when a hand was laid on her arm.

“It’s okay, I’ll get these,” said the suit. His voice was gentle, warm but slightly hoarse.

Trinity looked curiously between them. “You’re a friend of Laura’s?”

“Of the Bartons’,” the suit corrected. “But I’d seen your photo so I thought I’d come over and say hello before I went to see them.”

Every hair on Laura’s arms was standing on end. She looked at Trinity, no doubt storing all of this for the gossip mill, and wondered if she should be thinking about ideas like ‘civilian casualties’. Holy crap, what had she gotten herself into?

“Right,” she said. “Thanks.”

Antohi was bristling as the suit paid for her stamps. The badger looked perfectly calm by contrast, stolid as her human.

“Shall we?” the guy said.

Laura tried not to look as tense as she felt as she followed him out, but Antohi’s fur was bristling along his spine, and his ears were up and twitching. He didn’t take her far, stopping just outside the post office and smiling mildly at her. “I’m Phil Coulson, of the Strategic Homeland-”

“We actually hadn’t told her that part.”

The voice came from above, and Laura looked up to see Clint jumping down from the roof of the post office. Thea emerged seconds later from the shadows where Laura had once spotted Duquesne; she must have decided that climbing wasn’t for her, today.

“I’ll go tell Nat to stand down,” she said. She nodded at Coulson and his dæmon in turn before darting off, still limping a little.

“Laura, this is mine and Nat’s boss, Phil Coulson. Coulson, Laura Morgan, who is still blissfully unaware of many, many state secrets.”

Laura narrowed her eyes at him before turning back to Coulson. “In which case, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr Coulson,” she said.

Clint laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call you ‘mister’,” he commented.

“That’s because you are entirely lacking in conventional manners,” Coulson said drily. “So, what precisely have you told the lovely young woman, Barton?”

Laura frowned at that dismissal, and Clint was rolling his eyes too. “Me and Thea, Cassum, the circus,” he said. “That’s it. You saying we have leave to tell her more?”

“Do I want to know more?” Laura asked, since that seemed relevant.

Coulson considered her through small, squinty eyes. “Perhaps not. However, the director has already approved it and, to borrow a hackneyed phrase from the industry, it’s more a question of what you will, eventually, need to know.”

Laura was feeling more and more uneasy. “Eventually? So, in what event?”

Coulson only smiled. Frustrated, Laura looked to his dæmon for some indication of what he was feeling, but the badger just sat there, giving nothing away.

“Coulson.” Nat was strolling towards them, smiling, Cassum back to being a raccoon at her heels. “So nice of you to visit. Gosh, you haven’t seen the house since it was just a shell.”

The venom in that was barely veiled by the honey, and she positioned herself conspicuously on Laura’s other side, so she was sandwiched between the Barton siblings. That got a reaction from Coulson’s dæmon, who looked sharply between Nat and Clint.

“Stand down, Natasha,” said Coulson. “Miss Morgan is perfectly safe.”

A cough made them all look down at Thea, who had snuck up on them from the shadows again, and now placed herself firmly in front of Antohi. “I’m sure she’s happy to hear it.”

Coulson was still smiling that pleasant little smile as he said, “One day, Barton, I’ll teach you to stop picking up strays. At least without informing me in advance.”

Clint chuckled, but Nat tensed. Laura was lost, completely flummoxed, in the middle of a game she hadn’t realised was being played. There was history here which she didn’t have a hope of understanding. She no longer felt unsafe though, so she shook it off.

“Are you staying long, Mr Coulson?” she asked.

“A flying visit, I’m afraid,” he answered. “I’m here primarily to collect Clint and Natasha.”

Laura tried to hide her disappointment, but the badger laughed. Her voice was strangely light in comparison to Coulson’s weighty presence. “We’ll do our best to deliver them home safe and sound.”

Laura Morgan first realised that she was going to marry Clint Barton when she realised that at the age of twenty-one, she was already an army wife to both of the Barton siblings.

“Well then,” she said. “Let’s go back to the house, you can pack your things and I’ll go through the kitchen for you.” She faced Coulson. “And while they’re doing that, perhaps you should tell me what I need to know.”

~

_Several years, a wedding, two children, and many, many non-disclosure agreements later._

~

As it happened, both Clint and Nat were out of the country, and out of contact, when they found Captain America. Clint didn’t often do deep cover, but Nat had wanted a partner for this one (whatever ‘this one’ was), and as such, Laura found herself rudely awoken at three in the morning by her cellphone.

“Hello?” she mumbled.

“Laura, it’s Phil.”

That made her sit up. “Phil. Is something wrong?”

Antohi, who had been draped over her feet, leapt up to watch her face.

“No, not at all,” Phil assured her.

Laura sighed in relief and signed a quick _they’re okay_ to Antohi, thumb of her splayed hand tapping her breastbone twice before setting the phone down so he could hear too. “So, what’s the occasion?”

“They found Captain America,” Phil said, all in a single rush. “And his dæmon. Laura, they found Sigouria frozen in the ice.” He coughed, self-conscious. “And I got excited and needed to tell someone.”

Laura laughed.  “And to think I once thought you were terrifying.”

But Antohi was quivering, ears pricked. “Wait. They found Sigouria too? She was frozen with him?”

Laura’s eyes widened. “But that means-”

“That he’s alive,” Phil finished. “Laura, Steve Rogers is still alive.”

**Author's Note:**

> A note on the languages used in this fic:
> 
> Firstly, thank you very much to my beta Bethany, who is my guide to all things ASL. I am a linguist, but I’m not Deaf, nor am I American, so writing the ASL in this fic was a real challenge for me! Particularly when Bethany gently told me to get rid of all the gloss. She’s lucky I love her.
> 
> The Swordsman in the original comics is from Sin-Cong, a fictional country which is pretty obviously a metaphor for Vietnam. Whilst I don’t doubt that Natasha speaks Vietnamese, I don’t, and nor do I have a handy Vietnamese friend to help me adapt it into a slightly new dialect which could be Sin-Cong-ese! As such, I went with French, as Duquesne’s family were French colonialists and he would have grown up speaking both languages fluently.
> 
> My Russian is non-existent, and thus entirely the product of Google Translate. I do apologise. Any russophones are more than welcome to correct it.
> 
> When Laura remarks on the individuality of Cassum’s name, it is indeed because it’s from a different root language. All American-born dæmons in the fic have Greek-derived names, whereas Cassum is from Latin. In the HDM trilogy, dæmons are given names from many different linguistic traditions - Pantalaimon is Greek, Kirjava is Finnish, Stelmaria is from Latin - but I quite liked the idea that in this multinational ’verse, different countries had different traditions when it came to naming dæmons. Latin also brings to mind the Magisterium of the HDM trilogy, and particularly Bolvangar, whose closest parallel in this universe is the Red Room/Department X. Dæmons’ forms also tend to reflect the location in which their human was born, where I can help it. Nat is obviously an exception, although when Cassum becomes animals with European and American variants, she does default to the European.
> 
> If you want to talk about any of my dæmon headcanons with me, feel free to message me on tumblr :) I’m morpholomeg pretty much everywhere on the internet - come chat!


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